Plantwatch: showmanship in the woods

The young leaves of the oak tree - thriving on the warm weather. Photograph: Mark Tripp / Alamy/Alamy

This was a blue Easter across the country. Bluebells have come out early this spring and made a great show in brilliant warm sunshine. To help find bluebell woods across Britain, the Woodland Trust and other conservation bodies have a website at VisitWoods.org.uk.

To add to the colour, carpets of bright blue forget-me-not flowers are also out. Their name comes from a legend that a knight walked with his lady by a river, he slipped and fell into the water, and just before he drowned he threw her a bouquet of small, blue flowers and cried, "forget me not."

Plant life seems to be in an indecent rush to get through spring, and a surge of green is sweeping the country as trees open their new leaves. Already, horse chestnut trees are blooming with their big white flowers standing upright like candles, making the whole tree look like a huge candelabra. Hawthorn is showering hedgerows with its heaps of snow white blossom. Even the late-leafing trees are bursting their buds open, and the khaki-coloured young leaves of oaks have beaten their rivals, the ash; as the old saying goes, "Oak before ash, in for a splash/ Ash before oak, in for a soak."

Which is supposed to mean a wet summer if the ash comes into leaf first. In fact, the oak is thriving on the warm weather, while the ink-black, conical buds of the ash respond more to the lengthening hours of daylight.